Thursday, 29 April 2010

Gordon Brown tells supporters: “shut the f*ck up”

Well it wasn't that bad. Gordon Brown made a bit of a mistake and apologised - good for him. I have a soft spot for our Prime Minister; I could never vote for the party, I have a long held dislike for socialism that I really should explain one day, but I recognise a man with principles. I wish I could say the same for his support.

Watching the Twitter stream yesterday was both a fascination and a confirmation. After the gaffe there was a wave of ludicrously vitriolic sentiment directed against the PM. I confess I joined in but since he's on record with some UKIP-like nonsense of his own he was a difficult target to ignore. After a few hours we saw a counter strike but it was a confused and messy affair. The sensible part attempted to move the subject on; there are more serious issues such as a massive budget deficit and some pretty savage cuts in public services on the cards. Unfortunately for the Labour party, and fortunately for their opponents, they were outnumbered by a spiteful element that decided the best form of defence is attack; thus for mentioning the topic of immigration Gillian Duffy remained "a bigot" and their leader was chided for apologising.

You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that you're ... but all these eastern European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?

I don't particularly care for the language, it betrays a level of ignorance, but I'm struggling to see that it deserved such malice - to me it shows an uneducated woman attempting to grapple with a subject she feels important, who pauses as if to realise her words could be misconstrued. In the same rambling conversation the life-long Labour supporter also said:

We had it drummed in when I was a child with mine ... it was education, health service and looking after the people who are vulnerable.

Surely such a person should be brought in and shown the huge contribution that immigration has made and will continue to make to our country? Unhappily for Labour the antagonistic faction of their support would much rather have a fight; in doing so they exhibit that socialist characteristic of loving the romantic portrayal of the working class whilst not much caring for the reality. It turns out there are some supporters Gordon needs to slap down after all.